Sarah-Marie Belcastro in American Scientist:
Over the years I’ve knitted many Klein bottles, as well as other mathematical objects, and have continually improved my designs. When I began knitting mathematical objects, I was not aware of any earlier such work. But people have been expressing mathematics through knitting for a long time. The oldest known knitted mathematical surfaces were created by Scottish chemistry professor Alexander Crum Brown. (For more about Crum Brown's work, click the image at right). In 1971, Miles Reid of the University of Warwick published a paper on knitting surfaces. In the mid-1990s, a technique for knitting Möbius bands from Reid’s paper was reproduced and spread via the then-new Internet. (Nonmathematician knitters also created patterns for Möbius bands; one, designed to be worn as a scarf, was created by Elizabeth Zimmerman in 1989.) Reid’s pattern made its way to me somehow, and it became the inspiration for a new design for the Klein bottle. Math knitting has caught on a bit more since then, and many new patterns are available. Some of these are included in two volumes I coedited with Carolyn Yackel: Making Mathematics with Needlework (2007) and Crafting by Concepts (2011).
More here.
